Rambling, rumbling, rumination

My Perpetuum

I want to like Perpetuum, I really do. It has stompy robots, EVE-like thumbing of the nose at MMO traditions, and pretty visuals.

It’s just… I can’t run it. OK, technically I can, mostly. I’ve been through a couple of early tutorials (fairly nicely done, actually), but it’s slow, visually inconsistent (with texture resolution wildly variable) and a bit laggy or unstable (I’m not sure which, but at least it hasn’t crashed).

I should stress here: I think this is almost entirely my computer and connection’s fault. It even has some trouble with WoW, of “runs on a toaster” fame. Quite naturally, Perpetuum, a more demanding game, will have trouble, then. I was hoping to be able to play anyway, but it’s just not working well for me. I bear no ill will toward the game for this.

From what I’ve seen though, I can make note of a few things about game design:

One, there are a LOT of choices to make in character creation. Since I have almost no way of knowing what those choices will mean in the long run, I leaned to energy weapons (I love PPCs in BattleTech) and mining/crafting (I was curious to see if one could make a career in that instead of combat). There winds up being nine “classes”, I think, if the “spark” choice is indicative of major gameplay focus, but plenty of knobs to fiddle with under the hood to make yourself a generalist or specialist. The sequential nature of this series of choices is a bit tedious if you want to go back and change some aspect of your character, but without knowing what any of them really do to the play experience, I didn’t really bother much with a lot of tweaking.

The game itself doesn’t do a good job of explaining what it actually is, or what you’re expected to do. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for a sandbox type game, but Perpetuum does seem frontloaded with decisions with no measure of what’s really important to gameplay. Not having experience actually making those choices work, I’m not sure if any build is viable or if there will be one or two “golden path” builds. I’d like to think anything can work, though; otherwise, frontloaded decisions like that are a Bad Idea. It stinks to require a third party wiki doctorate program to understand character generation. (And of course, if you can respec, it’s not a big deal, but they make it a point to point out a few immutable choices, like the Spark that I’m roughly equating to a class, fairly or unfairly.)

Two, built on the first, is the system of character progression. Apparently, your account gets the equivalent of XP (or skill points, rather, that get spent on training) based purely on time. Also, any character on the account can spend those points. As near as I can tell (though I’d be happy to be wrong on this), spent points cannot be refunded, even by deleting a character.

This does a few things. First, early adopters win. At least, if skills are important. I presume this will be like what I understand of EVE, though, where skill points are mostly just a baseline and player skill and planning are the real key to progress. Second, altitis hurts. If you want to try out all nine “classes”, or even just different builds, making alternate characters to tinker can suck up those account points quickly. Maybe. Again, I’m not sure, not having spent a lot of time with the game, but again, this seems to benefit those who plan far ahead and/or can live with whatever uninformed choices they make on creation. If the game is flexible enough and/or playable with low skill points spent, that’s not likely to be a big problem, but if it’s easy to make a deeply flawed build and/or it’s expensive spending skill points to get to playable states, that’s going to be an unfortunate limit in the game.

Three, the UI isn’t like DIKU MMOs much at all. I’ve read that it’s like EVE’s UI, which would make sense (yes, I still need to try out EVE, but that probably won’t happen until next year). Looking at it in a hypothetical vacuum, it’s a complex beast, but it seems to be laid out fairly well. You can move around most elements of the UI, which is a great feature. It does come across a little like Windows on top of a game, so it’s not really high on the immersion scale, but that doesn’t bother me too much. All in all, the UI seems complex, but clean and usable.

Aaaand that’s about all I’ve got at present. I do wish I could have a cockpit view, like a MechWarrior, but that’s more a matter of taste than anything else (and maybe I just missed it). The basic robot I started with couldn’t jump, so Guild Wars haters take note, but I didn’t really expect it to. Controls are clean enough, standards WASD/mouse controls… though A and D strafe rather than turn by default.

Anyway, the game is still in open beta until November 25th, I think, so if it’s interesting to you at all, you may as well check it out. They aren’t planning on wiping characters at the end of the open beta, so if you like it, that’s a bonus.EDIT: I just got an email from them announcing the launch, and I was wrong, they will wipe characters and experience. I do recommend at least investigating it, as it seems like it has a lot of potential. I’m curious to see how the progression scheme settles out, and whether or not those character generation bits really matter. That could make or break the game.

As much as I’d like to like it, though, it’s just not going to be a game I can play much at the moment, and with a $10/month subscription impending, it’s not likely to be a game that I can play later if I get a better machine. Still, I wish the Perpetuum guys well, both for their own sake and in hopes that their success can pave the way for a MechWarrior MMO. It really does look like a good game that I’d have plenty of fun with, it’s just not going to work out. Maybe it will for you.

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I spent yesterday plowing through their online documentation, and also some time online last night creating a new character, so I have a better handle on how to create a character.

Essentially, there’s three “spheres” of development: combat, industry and diplomacy. Combat is pew pew. Industry is harvesting, mining and construction. Diplomacy is about getting deals on the market, and running corporations.

Each step of character creation offers opportunities to add on to one of these three spheres. The sparks, the schools and anything other then the corporate selection gives you advantages in one of the three spheres. At character creation, you can see the accumulation of points in each sphere in the lower right corner of the screen.

I am sorry to hear that you have “engine trouble.” It seems to be an interesting game, though it is clearly no MMO, as the Mechs can’t jump. Sorry, could not resist.

In EVE you won’t ever catch up, true, but the system is not too punishing and by now new chars start out with much more boost than my char, who also was fairly quickly able to use various kinds of battleships and so on.

This said, the system is discouraging. Staying subscribed even if you don’t play just to not lose out on skillpoints – no, thank you. Be it EVE or Perpetuum, I don’t like it. Also the idea that you won’t progress faster in training, no matter how much time you spend playing and how well you play.

For this system the sub makes sense, though!

Regarding F2P, I already told you, LOTRO F2P is more like a Free Trial model. Everyone knows F2P means there will be incentives to buy points for stuff and sometimes you won’t be able to avoid paying a little.
But where is the beauty of a la carte, F2P, that even if you accept a lot of restrictions will have to pay the bare minimum to play a quest-based game, a single zone questpack – and that costs almost as much a month subscription, which also gives you 500 Turbine points on top of that.
Basically, I dare to say players now pay SUB+SHOP to play LOTRO. Unless they decide to never venture past the Lone Lands with more than one char. Oh well, is that F2P? We lump together every non-sub business model under this label, I do not think it hits the spirit of the LOTRO model.

I hope Perpetuum turns out well, might give it a try, but I am a bit busy and already playing GW, STO and LOTRO. Maybe you should ask Santa for a new MECH for Xmas to run Perpetuum!

Scopique, thanks for stopping by!
I also read up a bit on the website before diving in, and figured out the combat/industry/diplomacy triad as I tinkered with the creator. It really is nicely flexible to make either a focused character or a balanced one, and I like that it also shows you the skills (weaponry, piloting, etc.) that your build acquires as you go (since it changes according to your focus). I should have been clearer: it’s not that I didn’t see that, it’s that there’s little clarity as to how those will affect day to day gaming. This is especially true for a diplomat-heavy build; combat and crafting are pretty straight forward, but what do diplomats do all the time? It seems that making a character solely to play the market and run a corp might be a bit shallow by comparison to the other two… but hey, if they make it a viable specialty for fun play, that’s pretty cool.

And again, I’m sure all of this will be available on a wiki at some point, but the game itself should explain things a little better, I think.

Longasc, indeed, for the progression system, subs make a lot of sense. They couldn’t convert this (or EVE) to F2P without some significant changes… maybe game breaking ones. I’m not terribly fond of the progression model in the first place, though, so it’s not one that I’d compromise and go ahead and sub for.

Heh, I’ve wanted a new MECH for a while now. The mother board on this one has had issues, and it’s a bit flaky here and there. I think my family burned up Santa credit by installing new windows yesterday, though. ;)

I’m not sure if any build is viable or if there will be one or two “golden path” builds.

What is this? Also with the ‘early adopters win’ as well?

Why do you care if there’s a golden path build? The game doesn’t have an ending, does it? I mean, I’m pretty much a play to win person, yet I wouldn’t care about supposed golden builds, because there is no way to win the darn game! What WINS is a golden build – without the capacity to win the game, there is no golden build. And if I set an objective for myself, I’d build to fit my objective.

There’s seemingly this weird, incompatable exploration and play to win approach your taking here – it just shoots yourself in the foot.

It’s a game design issue. As I noted in the Candyland article, an uninformed choice may as well not be a choice at all, but if you’re stuck with it and don’t know that it’s a choice you wouldn’t have made until dozens of hours down the road, and there’s no way to change it if you don’t like it, that’s bad game design. It’s also a bit shady in a subscription game, where rectifying uninformed choices means starting over and paying for another month.

I’m not certain that is the case with Perpetuum, but the lack of information is something I think is worth pointing out. It may well be that any mix is useful, in which case there really isn’t a concern.

Still, to my design mind, if you’re going to start out generically useful, why have irreversible choices at the start at all? Let players start out as generalists and once they know what they like to do based on tutorials and some of the early content, let them lock themselves into a specialty if they want to.

I’d like to see an MMO that slowly offers you choices that influence your custom class instead of throwing those things on you from the beginning…Ha, what if your character even looked like a child at the start and then grew up at some point…Forgive my musings!

That could be very cool, Anton! We’ve seen moves in that direction with subclass specialization in things like Aion or Tabula Rasa, and the impending SWTOR has class splits, so it’s not unprecedented. Tying it into character aging and storytelling would be a nice layer to the system.

Tesh, I’m seeing a contradiction of priorities. If the tires on your bike were flat yet I saw you going to go for a ride, I doubt you’d think I was just wanting an arguement if I said to you your tires were flat. And heck, maybe I’m utterly mistaken in seeing a contradiction.

Please don’t draw the ‘your a troll’ card so quickly. As it’s completely counter productive – a real troll would not care and someone who isn’t a troll is just upset by it.

PS: I screwed up on closing my italics so it went on and on in my post without me intending it.

The thing is, this article isn’t about my priorities as a player, it’s about the design of the game. I get it, you don’t like Explorers or casuals and for whatever reason you seem to think I want every game to cater to my tastes. Get over it and read what’s there rather than looking for imagined subtexts to attack Explorers from. It’s been a persistent habit with you, and it’s not constructive.

I don’t think you’re a troll (I’ve had the misfortune of deleting a few of those, and you’re more like… the Opposition Party), but you have a pattern of arguing, often *trying* to find things to argue about. It may just be a personality thing, but it’s getting old. There’s definitely room for different views and I’m certainly not expecting an echo chamber, but please try to address what is being discussed, rather than continuing a crusade.

Maybe I’m getting old but I really dislike games that aren’t streamlined or well-made to run properly. Something I adore about WoW (and only really recognised it after I started playing) is just how well it runs on a variety of machines. Sames go for Starcraft 2. Contrast this to MMOs like Age of Conan and EQ2 (when it came out) and not only is it a real pain for the player but also wipes out a huge portion of the potential playerbase.

Tesh, I think exploring and play to win go together like oil and water. I’m not saying that out of dislike for exploring – I mean at a literal human psychological level, you can only primarily enjoy one or the other at one time, not both. Now maybe that’s not true/not a fact, but I’m working off what I think is a fact, not just spouting some dislike I have for explorers. In terms of talking about a game with exploration & also in terms of looking for best builds – I’m seeing an oil and water conflict. I could be reading you wrong, but equally you might be reading me wrong. Anyway, there’s the oil and water idea and I’ll wrap up on it since I’ve put it out there for anyone it’s of interest to.

I was fortunate enough to receive an “early access” key the other night, and I’ve played a couple of long-ish sessions since then.

I haven’t got a clue what the attributes mean or do since you gain your “Extention Points” at the rate of 1 per minute period end of sentence no more discussion. I’m guessing that they make skills cheaper to buy if the skills use the attributes you’re focused on, but that’s really just a guess.

I felt that the character creation was fairly straight-forward in letting you know which path you were choosing, and since you can have 3 “agents” and there are really 3 main path, I just went all in on combat for my 1st agent. This gave me some basic combat skills, but then the 40,000 EP you get on account creation were where I rounded that out.

I think I did mess up in that I didn’t focus as much on my gunnery skills as I could have, but unlocked a lot of pre-reqs to be able to pilot the larger robots, not realizing at the time that those robots probably aren’t going to really be available for a while.

I’ve run through the 10 tutorial mission, and they’re kinda nice in that they show you combat and mining. You also get a slightly upgraded noob robot about halfway through, and then you get the 1st “light robot” after the 10th. But, like in EVE, if you try to fill it up you find you don’t have the fitting skills as a noob to do it. Still… I’ve got 4 guns on it (double of the noobie bot) and an armor repper, and that’s really all you need.

It’s kinda fun, but as you said, I have no idea what I’m looking at for the future. I’ve done a few missions that give me faction with a megacorp, but I don’t know what that faction is good for. I know how to use the teleporters to get around, but don’t know why I’d want to. I mean, yeah, I’m on noobie island and I’ll want to get off it sooner or later, but when and which direction and why? More money for better items? Better items even being available? I just don’t know at this point.

So… it’s kinda fun, but I don’t know how far I’ll go with it. My account is active until 24 December, so I’ll dink with it a few times a week, I suppose, and then decide if I want to keep going with it.